1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless speaker system and, more particularly, to a wireless speaker system for transmitting and receiving digital and analog audio signals over a single high-frequency channel at frequencies above 900 MHz.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advent of home theater systems and with high definition television rapidly becoming a commercially viable technology, speaker systems must be available for the home audiophile that are suitable for such high-fidelity use. Wireless speaker systems provide a particularly attractive solution since installation does not require extensive and possibly expensive wiring. In addition, wireless speaker systems may be moved about within a room to obtain optimum performance or, alternatively, may be moved from room-to-room or even from house to house with minimal inconvenience.
A variety of wireless stereo speaker systems are now commercially available. These systems have used a variety of either analog transmission techniques or digital transmission techniques to communicate audio signals wirelessly from a transmitter to a receiver. The drawbacks of such systems, however, is that by utilizing, for example, only analog transmission techniques, the high fidelity benefits resulting from digitized signal are not present. Likewise, by utilizing only a digital transmission technique, the benefits of an analog signal are absent. Accordingly, there exists a need for a wireless speaker system utilizing both digital and analog transmitting techniques so that the reproduced audio signal obtains the benefits associated with both digital and analog signal reproduction.